


christmas traditions

by belovedmuerto



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Christmas, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Traditions, implied steve/bucky both past and future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 12:57:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17142179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: Bucky wants to know what they used to do at Christmas.





	christmas traditions

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, folks! Here's some fluff, thanks to a prompt from SoftObsidian74 on twitter (who seems to have disappeared, but I hope you see this and enjoy it!).
> 
> Thanks also to mariknickerbocker for the quick beta.

The first Christmas After is not actually the first Christmas after. It’s the second. The first one he spent… well, he doesn’t really remember, and he’s OK with that. Some memories he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want. He’s got plenty of memories that he really doesn’t want these days, so he’s pretty good with this one being not there.

But this year. He’s not sure about this year.

Steve had insisted on moving out of the Tower about ten minutes after he’d shown up again, and considering how long it had taken him to work up the nerve to approach that place, Bucky did not consider that a bad thing.

They ended up in a place in Brooklyn, which was both exceedingly weird, and one hundred percent home. Bucky spent a lot of time perched on their fire escape or their roof, watching people.

Partly it was threat assessment. Partly it was just because people are interesting.

But it got cold, and Steve kept giving him layers, and he kept putting them on, and eventually it was too many layers and he stopped spending his whole day on the roof or the fire escape.

Once he started spending more time inside, Steve started giving him blankets which, honestly? Improvement. He likes blankets.

He likes being warm. It’s a very nice feeling, warmth.

He feels it every time he looks at Steve. Warmth.

Christmas is coming up. He knows this, because the television tells him multiple times a day. He spends some time, wrapped in two blankets and several layers, on the fire escape thinking about Christmas.

He has a few associations with Christmas, but they’re sort of vague and half-formed. He wonders if that’s because of how long it’s been since he had a Christmas, or because of how many times his brain has been fried.

It could be either, if he’s honest.

So he asks.

Steve looks at him with surprise, when he brings it up.

“What do we do for Christmas?”

The surprise might be because he doesn’t really talk. Much. 

It’s hard for him, sometimes, to find words. This time he succeeded, though. Perhaps because he’s been thinking about it for days.

Steve gives him that look that means he’s ecstatic and sad and proud as hell of Bucky all at once. He both loves and hates that look.

“Well, things were kinda rough, back then.” He’s looking down, rubbing the back of his neck. “Mostly we just had each other. But we always tried to get each other a couple little things at Christmas. Oranges in our stockings, like when we were kids. I think your parents helped us both out, around the holidays. I would draw stuff for you, most years. Maybe knit you some socks, when I could get the money for yarn.”

“What did I do?”

“Kept me warm at night,” Steve says immediately. He looks like he regrets it almost as quickly.

He doesn’t talk about how they were together, before. Not very much, anyway. They’re not, now. But Bucky thinks they will be. Again. Soon. He’s not sure how soon.

(Probably sooner rather than later. He still has trouble with. Touching. Which makes things difficult.

He’s working on it. He wants to work on it. 

He wants.

Steve seems to be content with waiting, although Bucky has definitely noticed how often he jerks off. He’s pretty sure Steve knows he knows, too.)

“You got me pencils, most years. And tried to get me paper, whenever you could beg, borrow, or steal it. We had some good years, Buck.”

Bucky nods, and Steve smiles at him.

Steve always accepts that Bucky doesn’t talk much. He’s accepted everything about Bucky, from the moment he’d shown up in the lobby of Avengers Tower and asked for Steven Grant Rogers.

(That had been a fun day.)

“Do you want to do something for Christmas this year, Buck?”

He shrugs, because he doesn’t know. 

“OK, Buck.” Steve smiles at him again. 

He smiles at Bucky often, and it always blooms inside him, warmth and something that he’s tentatively identifying as happiness.

He watches Steve sleep for a while that night. He does it every night. It’s creepy, and he’s aware of that, but creepy has been his wheelhouse for about seven decades. He’s used to it. It’s also very soothing and is basically the only way he can get his brain to settle enough to get even a few hours of sleep.

He knows he used to watch Steve sleep, back Before, too. It was always not quite a good thing to do, but he had a better excuse back then at least, with Steve’s asthma and his other health issues.

He’s not sure if Steve knows he does this.

He’s pretty sure he doesn’t care. 

Each night, he inches a little closer to the bed, a little closer to Steve. 

About a week into doing this, Steve finally wakes up. He turns over and smiles at Bucky. “Hey, Buck,” he mumbles, clearly mostly asleep still.

Bucky is pretty proud of Steve, for hearing him enough to wake up, even if his reaction is nowhere near what it should be, for waking up to an assassin in his room.

Steve is still smiling at him, soft and warm, and something twists in his chest.

“You OK?” Steve asks.

Bucky nods.

“You can get in if you want.” And Steve turns back over to his side, and slides back into sleep as best Bucky can tell. And he’s pretty sure he can tell, after this long. Steve sleeps much the same way he always has.

It’s comforting, knowing that. Things have changed, but some stuff is still the same.

He doesn’t get into bed with Steve that night, or the next. The third night, he sits down next to Steve, and stays there for several hours, dozing. It’s nice.

\----

A tree appears, in the apartment, in the corner by the window. Steve brings home ornaments, and lights, and little bits of tinsel that he drapes over the branches.

It doesn’t look like any of the trees they ever had when they were young. For one thing, it doesn’t look mostly dead. And the ornaments that Steve had brought home all match. They’re all red and silver and pretty.

It’s nice.

That evening, he wraps himself in his favorite of the blankets Steve has given him, and sits on the couch to look at the tree.

After a while, Steve comes out of the kitchen with two mugs, and sits next to him. 

“Made some hot chocolate,” he says.

Bucky takes a mug from him, and Steve sits down next to him, close but not so close it makes him itchy to move. Steve seems to understand even without being told, how close he can sit. Steve seems to understand a lot of things that no one else does.

“Did we do this?”

Steve shakes his head. “No. Not really. One time we went to Manhattan to see the Rockefeller tree, but we didn’t usually sit around with our own tree. We were both real busy, sick or working or sick and working.”

His face does a weird thing then. Smiling, he thinks. Just a little, but it’s a new sensation, and Steve seems real happy about it because he grins back, a big dopey grin that Bucky is pretty sure he loves.

“But what was I doing?” he asks, after a minute.

He’s doing real good with the talking today.

Steve laughs, and he keeps smiling at him, and warmth blooms in his chest like always when he’s around Steve.

Once he settles down, Bucky goes back to looking at the tree. He can feel Steve watching him, for a few minutes, before he looks at the tree, too.

“We could do this every year,” he suggests. “It could be a new tradition.”

Bucky nods.

\----

Steve doesn’t wake up until Bucky is laying down next to him. He turns over and smiles. “Everything OK?”

Bucky nods, and folds his hands together over his stomach.

“‘K,” and Steve goes back to sleep, just like that. Still smiling.

Bucky lays quietly and listens to Steve breathe awhile. At some point, he dozes off.

He wakes up again, and is surprised that he’d fallen asleep at all. He feels… good. He listens to Steve breathe for a while, again, and drifts off.

When he wakes up the second time, Steve’s nose is pressed against his shoulder, and that’s OK. Apparently, touching isn’t as bad now as it has been.

_It’s a Christmas miracle_ , he thinks, and then nearly snorts at himself.

He finds that he doesn’t want to move.

It’s a while before Steve wakes up, and Bucky enjoys every breath, every moment of it. He gradually notices that Steve’s nose against his shoulder is not the only point of contact between them. There are fingertips against his arm, now and again when Steve moves a little, and sometimes his knee bumps Bucky’s hip or thigh.

None of it makes him itch. None of it makes him twitch.

Steve does wake up after a time. He rubs his nose against Bucky’s shoulder a little-- he can feel his nose wrinkle at that.

“Gross, Rogers.” It just comes out, without any thought on his part at all.

Steve giggles, and rolls onto his back still smiling. “It’s Christmas Eve,” he says.

Bucky nods.

“Doing anything fun today?” Steve asks him.

Bucky gives him a look, and shakes his head. He doesn’t want to do much different than what they’ve been doing. 

“I think Tony is sending over food,” Steve adds. “I said something about making dinner for Christmas, and he balked.”

Bucky shrugs and turns his head to look at Steve.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a lousy cook, I know. I don’t see you taking over.”

Bucky lifts one hand to point a finger at his own head, making circles, and Steve’s jaw drops for a moment before he recovers and starts laughing. “You’re an asshole.”

Bucky smiles, and then gets up.

\----

The day passes quietly. Steve bakes cookies while Bucky sits at the kitchen island, watching. He eats a few of them, but his stomach doesn’t allow for too much of that. 

In the afternoon, a delivery person shows up with a feast courtesy of Tony Stark.

“How are we gonna eat all this?” Steve says, while they’re standing around the dining room table neither of them has ever used, surveying the vast quantity of food.

Bucky elbows Steve and snorts, and after a moment, Steve chuckles and shrugs. “Yeah, you’re right.”

The each eat a little bit before they put everything away for the next day. Steve disappears into his room and returns with a few presents that he puts under the tree. He gives Bucky a defiant look that he remembers incredibly well, and Bucky shrugs at him.

He goes into his room and gets the presents he’d bought for Steve, bringing them back and putting them next to Steve’s pile.

Steve just gapes at him. 

“When did you go shopping?” 

Bucky points at Steve’s laptop, because the internet exists.

“How--?”

Bucky knows what Steve wants to ask him. How did he get money? Bucky is for all intents and purposes a ghost. He currently has no identity, at least none that’s official.

But he was also a very well-trained operative before he was Hydra’s puppet. He knows some stuff about some stuff.

Like bank accounts. Lots of bank accounts.

Instead of trying to explain that to Steve though, he just shrugs. And then he watches as Steve visibly fights with his desire to ask, and his certainty that he doesn’t actually want to know.

The certainty wins.

When it gets dark out, he goes around turning off lights, and turns on the lights on the tree, wraps himself in a blanket, and sits on the couch.

A few minutes later, Steve joins him with two mugs of hot chocolate. He sits closer than he has in the past, so their shoulders brush together.

They drink their hot chocolate in silence for a while. Steve slowly settles a little more against him, and Bucky braces himself to feel trapped, but the feeling never comes, not even when Steve finishes his drink, sets the mug on the coffee table, and puts his head on Bucky’s blanket wrapped shoulder. Bucky leans over a little so his head rests on top of Steve’s.

“Merry Christmas, Buck,” Steve says, soft and tender.

Bucky smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://www.twitter.com/BelovedMuerto), or [dreamwidth](https://belovedmuerto.dreamwidth.org), or [tumblr](http://www.belovedmuerto.tumblr.com) i guess.


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